Exile
A familiar scene graced the conclusion of Ms. Lemon’s creative nonfiction class. A solid twenty of the juniors and seniors in the group were once again fighting the dreaded fatigue of the tenth-period stretch, desperately trying with their arms to keep their almost lifeless heads from making contact with their desks. The black-haired head of Marty Sittler, seventeen, had already slipped its way down to the inside bend of his left arm, covering one of his eyes but letting him peek out the large tenth-floor window on the right side of the cabinet with the other. He had the feeling at the start of the semester that taking the seat tucked away in the back-left corner of the classroom would serve him well, and it did. Now, concealed behind more heavyset classmates in the desks around him, he could doze off at will using his pink Eastpak pencil case as a makeshift pillow, and if he shimmied about enough in his chair with his head below Ms. Lemon’s sightline, he could discern the spire of the Empire State Building in the distance.
By the time the distinctive “boop” of the final bell could be heard reverberating through the hallway, Ms. Lemon had conceded to the students’ indifference to the lesson and retired to her large desk at the front of the room. Before long, the students started to siphon out of the classroom one by one, some with a bit of added invigoration, and others barely clutching on to one strap of their rucksacks, probably still fighting drowsiness from earlier in the period.
Marty was just aware enough of the bell today that he didn’t need Ms. Lemon to make the reproving walk over to his corner, which she had done several times over the last week. He absolutely loathed it when that happened, not just because of the embarrassment in front of other students, but because of some of the questions that Ms. Lemon would ask upon approaching him. One thing in particular he felt she was picking on him for was the constant redness in his eyes (curiously always there when he was the last remaining one in the classroom), and she would always try to refer him to the nurse afterward. Marty’s will to get diagnosed in school was so minimal, he had trained himself to just reply that he had allergies, or that long word he could barely pronounce, conjunctivitis. He didn’t need the odd talking-to this time, but couldn’t avoid the thought of it as he slipped on his black work jacket and noticeably stumbled, maybe because of the weight of his bag, on his way out the door.
After ambling his way down the rear staircase and through the front gates near Chambers Street, Marty was once again welcomed by the familiar park benches, greenery and stoic buildings to the left and right that he had come to know as Stuyvesant High’s backdrop over the last three years of his life. In the periphery of this pseudo-garden hid the Terry’s vs. Ferry’s bodega rivalry, of which Marty had already had enough time to test the limits. Usually, Terry’s was the safer option for a munchies run during seventh period, as it wasn’t across the road, but sometimes, Ferry’s pulled through with their special cheat-worthy meal, buffalo chicken bagels, which although messy tended to do the job pretty well. On this afternoon, Marty was carrying a full bar of multicolored Hi-Chews and a stick and a half of leftover green apple Mentos from last week in the side pocket of his black Herschel.
Hidden away further in the bend of the Hudson River Terrace, overlooking the waterfront of Jersey City, was Marty’s trusty moped, a gift he had received from his distant father not long after obtaining his motorcycle license. It wasn’t anything remotely extraordinary―a matte black finish with the paint chips and oxidized headlights characteristic of its age―but it had helped him commute up the West Side Highway to school for the last year and a half. While many of his friends had assumed the popular route of earning their non-commercial licenses to get behind the wheel of a proper car, there was something about the nature of mopeds that appealed to him more than just a run-of-the-mill sedan. Marty found them sleeker, cooler to own, and therefore cooler to use, as the compact form factor made driving one a much more personal experience, especially while traveling through the packed Manhattan streets in the open air. The fact that operating a moped also implied putting on a motorcycle helmet was the cherry on top for Marty, who, in agreement with his monochrome theme, boasted one of glossy carbon fiber with a large, darkly tinted visor. It helped that he could conceal his face in the same manner that the two members of Daft Punk, one of his favorite bands, would hide theirs from the public with their iconic metallic headgear―displaying equal parts reservation and subtle attraction to stealth.
Helmet on, Marty was once again on the road back home. He had elected not to return the same way he had arrived in the morning, as there was a roadblock on Laight Street due to an accident involving a school bus earlier on in the day. Thankfully, inconveniences like these sprouting up alongside the West Side Highway weren’t an uncommon thing for Marty to navigate, and he chose the next best option of following a parallel path up Broadway instead. The roads would be narrower and inevitably congested, but he was familiar enough with the path back to justify doing it once more.
He advanced down Chambers Street first, just enough to see the side of the Tribeca Bridge reflecting the crisp February sunlight, and then further to observe the familiar Stuyvesant crowd hastily pouring out. On the side of the street extending from the bridge, it’s a scene somewhat akin to a Where’s Waldo comic strip, with a mishmash of students and some teachers conforming to the stratification you would expect in a school lodged at the heart of a big city. There were the small groups of boisterous spectacled boys boasting of their recent grades and League of Legends escapades; the girls in their light Canada Goose puffers cautiously descending down the stairs with their eyes glued to their iPhones; the bright royal varsity jackets of members of the school’s football team, which had just completed its season; and others in nothing but the tees and shorts of their running kits, probably heading to their track meets. Oh, and near the intersection of the street and highway, Marty could just make out the slender Ms. Lemon’s pink beanie as she moved among the masses.
As the students filed away into their respective train terminals to head home―the 1, 2, and 3 at West Broadway, the A and C at Church Street, and stations for the 4, 5, 6, J, R, W, and Z surrounding City Hall―the pile-up of humanity on the sidewalks thinned as the world surrounding Stuyvesant dissolved into the greater picture of New York City. Once again, Marty could see the scaffolding above the awnings of small pizza parlors, pubs, and repair shops popping into view as he passed Church, and the staple breakfast carts and food trucks getting replaced by impromptu fruit stands and the smell of roasted peanuts.
In reaching the big green Broadway sign, Marty knew to turn left. While sandwiched between two service trucks and staring wearily at the cracking asphalt below him, he could feel several short successive breezes about his sides. He glanced up momentarily to find three skateboarders―the one at the front carrying a small boombox―skittering their way towards City Hall, with their baggy ripstop pants fluttering noisily as they went. They zipped too quickly through the intersection for Marty to determine if he recognized them or not, but he figured the chances weren’t great. Many New York City skaters dress the same, but they all have different faces inside their hoods.
Making his way down the esophagus of the city, Marty could feel the tension of the school day starting to leave his body, and the energy of the New Yorkers in the narrow streets around him seeping in. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could notice the vagrants dozing off with their dogs on the sidelines while elegantly dressed couples passed by with their large SoHo shopping bags; construction workers yelling orders across the road while the buskers and caricaturists on the corner of Worth Street persevere through the noise; the foreign tourists, fresh off their double-decker buses, jostling through the jaded locals and backpacked businesspeople, trying hard to evade the persistent sellers of cheap trinkets and counterfeit luxury goods. The macro-scale action-reaction nature of the city operating at its busiest made Marty feel like he was traveling through a transparent tunnel only wide enough for him and his moped―not because of discomfort with his surroundings, but because of the sensation of being so close, yet so far from every interaction around him.
But as he inched forward, fatigue started to take over. It didn’t seem to be an ordinary symptom of school burnout; he could feel the head inside his helmet rapidly heating up from the ears inwards. Sweat began to drip from his temples and between his eyebrows as he approached the Leonard Street sign, prompting him to instinctively reach for a non-existent water bottle in the side pocket of his bag. The helmet began to adhere to his forehead, and with no way to take it off while stranded in the middle of the busy Broadway thoroughfare, Marty went into a world of worry.
He tried crying out loud for help, but could only manage a small squeal of pain because of the dizziness and disorientation that the oven of his helmet was causing him. It wasn’t the kind of playful light-headedness you could achieve when spinning around a baseball bat with your forehead on the knob a couple of times, but rather an experience much more involved, and uncontrollable. It was more like waking up after having a series of loosely connected lucid dreams and having all the adventures momentarily collapse into each other and flash before your lost, groggy self, then evaporating from your mind permanently.
In between his very tired reverse blinks at the red light, Marty saw a mosaic of his life growing sharper in his mind. First, he saw the empty, dilapidated studio he couldn’t stand living in (across the street from where Friends was filmed) with its bare mattress, mini-fridge, and two drawers. One of the drawers was slightly ajar with a couple of crumpled $20 notes, the other locked. That contained the dope that Greg, his mother’s boyfriend, peddled not too far off in Washington Square. His poor mother, with tears in her eyes, sat in the corner of the room with her arms crossed over her knees. They hurled insults at each other. He fought her over rent. Marty fought him for fighting her. He saw his first time on a trip, in the dark, under the rain, up against an electric pole with a pack of Marlboros that he didn’t need to get ID’d for at the bodega stuffed in his shirt pocket. It was all jumbled up, racing through his brain just fast enough to beat out the green light and the sudden horns from all the vehicles behind.
Startled by that noise, Marty once again lifted his head and started moving on with the rest of the traffic. But the New York City in front of him was markedly different from the one he had just seen mere moments ago. In fact, it appeared to be transforming by the very second, right before his eyes. The skyline, the sidewalks, the roads, and pretty much everything was shifting and shimmying around. The graffiti-covered building tops started jutting out, then bouncing in and out of position as if they were made of gelatin. Every engravement, embellishment, and motif on the brick, concrete, and gypsum making up the city became more vivid and exaggerated. The graphics on some of the signposts, awnings, and boarded up pop-up shops looked like they were pushing off their respective surfaces and levitating in the air like a bunch of holograms. One of the floating images that Marty was nearest to was that of a pair of unicorns on plywood boards covering what was recently a pizzeria, surrounded by repeating patterns of “Peace,” “Love,” and “New York” painted in various styles and pastel colors. As they reached the dusking sky, the black unicorns appeared to rock back and forth, as if ready to jump, before losing their shape, and the words gradually started melting into those nearby, forming a sludgy, eerie mist that looked like spray paint that had been suspended in the air for too long.
The city had a place for people like Marty, but not much mercy for them. He had known this since birth. And once again, the city was giving him the signal to escape it for his own good. So, escape he did, or at least he tried.
It wasn’t long before Marty would find himself with his right hand glued to the throttle, swerving in and out of the right lane of a busy 6 p.m. Broadway with no regard for the traffic that might or might not have been there. He couldn’t even see the vehicles, as everything below his sightline had now reduced to a blur. Relative to the fog and the projections in his vision, he knew he was still moving north. He could only tell that he was ahead of certain checkpoints, if you could call them that, by what he could see overhead. Canal Street, usually identifiable by a wide, yet densely populated passage rife with the vibrant hanging signs of the various restaurants, boba shops, and spice markets of Chinatown, had condensed into a medley of neon red Chinese characters in the night sky. By parsing rapidly through whatever Mandarin word bank he’d retained from the last three years of Ms. Pan’s class, Marty managed to recognize the ten strokes of the most prominent character, reading it as “home,” while the others either settled in behind it or completely dissolved from view. With little hesitation, he shut his eyes once more, this time for a bit longer. While trying in earnest to wipe his mind clean of the gamut of thoughts and emotions of the past, he could feel the outside darkness eating him up.
When Marty woke up, his vision had returned to normal, but that wasn’t obvious to him at first because he was still raising his face from the cold, hard sidewalk. He found his right leg stuck uncomfortably inside a broken concrete flower pot, and wriggled his way out before discovering his helmet and moped in a smoking heap several feet from where he lay. Several bystanders had already drawn their phones to film; he must’ve crashed hard. His thoughts bounced as violently as you’d expect for someone whose adrenaline must’ve been firing on all cylinders, going from worrying over the damaged moped, to worrying about himself, to considering socking one of those paparazzi right in the mouth. He got to one knee, keeping still for about a minute, trying to cool off. The pain began to seep back into his joints and muscles, and his increasingly loud, sharp cries were drowned out by the ever-present horns and sirens of maddened Manhattan motorists.
Marty was able to get to his feet, however slowly, without any help. With his head down, he staggered over to the nearby telephone booth and leaned against its plastic back, bracing his feet on the asphalt in front of him. With a heavy breath, he took a single, cursory glance at the site of destruction, and then looked off blankly into the cosmos as if seeking answers. The front of one skyscraper occupied most of his vision, and though his proximity to the building made it more difficult to instantly identify, Marty could recognize that jagged, Art Deco facade anywhere. He slowly looked up to see the top floors of the Empire State Building starting to glow a rich, bright red.
By Joshua Spektor
Photographs done in collaboration with the New Media Artspace at Baruch College. The New Media Artspace is a teaching exhibition space in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College, CUNY. Housed in the Newman Library, the New Media Artspace showcases curated experimental media and interdisciplinary artworks by international artists, students, alumni, and faculty. Special thanks to docent Kezia Velista for creating artwork for this piece.
Check the New Media Artspace out at http://www.newmediartspace.info/